Don't Confess
by notbang
Summary: "This she knows as well: she can't not have him in her life." The long hard journey from one admission to another, and beyond.


**A/N: Uploading a bunch of old stuff that apparently never made it over here. **

**Parts in the Sum of the Whole and Doctor in the Photo centric.  
**

* * *

_"Two plus two equals four. I put sugar in my coffee and it tastes sweet.  
The sun comes up because the world turns. These things are beautiful to me.  
There are mysteries I will never understand, but everywhere I look,  
I see proof that for every effect there is a corresponding cause.  
Even if I can't see it. I find that reassuring."_

- Brennan, _The Devil in the Details_

* * *

Booth jokes and asks her how this can feel like the worst break up he's ever experienced when they weren't even together. She meets his eyes, still mournful and apologetic. He nods – of course. It's too soon.

He insists they still eat so she waits in the car while he orders, and when she unlinks her arm from his it's like somebody suddenly stopped applying pressure to an open wound and _ohshitohgod_, she's/he's/_they're_ bleeding out. The ride back to her apartment is mostly silent and when she indicates with her head that it's okay for him to come up he hesitates at his own plan. She pleads with him with her eyes – if only they can force this back into _normal _somehow, now before this chapter closes, tomorrow and its inevitable aftermath might not seem so terrible.

Only of course there's a movie on the television they picked out together starring Clara Bow who she channelled when they went undercover together and they sit on the couch they've sat on thousands of times doing paper work together, and she can't help but think all that history, all that painful domesticity, is mocking them. She understands, now, what Sweets meant about the dam breaking, because there's water, _so much water, _not just hers but his, too, swirling together and tugging at them both, and when the incredible _sadness_ that she hasn't felt in so long overwhelms her once more, he places his hands on her shoulders and tells her it's okay, and he hugs her, _hugs her, _and she wishes he'd stop being such a horribly _good _person and making everything so much incredibly harder to take.

"Bones, it's okay," he says again, and she pushes her hands against him and shakes her head.

"No. No, it's not okay. Stop saying everything is _okay, _when it isn't. I am a horrible, horrible person."

She lets him hold her and she knows she's being selfish – taking comfort in his arms when she's the very one that did this to them both, that broke whatever's still breaking, piece by painful piece, between them. She can't stop crying, and she hates that, and his collar and neck are damp and warm against her skin.

When she wakes, hours later in the middle of the night, Booth – _Booth's keys, Booth's jacket, Booth's unbelievable capacity for understanding_- is gone.

She draws her knees up to her chest and starts to wonder what on earth she's done.

* * *

There is something perhaps she didn't make clear enough:

She knows.

Just like Booth, she _knows, _has always _known, _and what she knows are many things, things he may not see or even want to.

She knew a little that night before the tequila, their near-trysting and the taxi; she definitely knew _after, _and in the very least she knew enough to leave alone. To close a door so that another might remain open. That something about the way they connected, the way they kissed, the way he confessed and caught her eye deserved more than their own libidos and the alcohol on their breaths, and that there was the possibility that this was something with which she could not deal lightly, from which she could not simply walk away. She wasn't ready for that then; still isn't entirely ready for that now.

This is a knowledge that will remain with her – for thirty years, forty, even fifty.

This is the kind of knowledge that stays til the end of days.

(It's part fate; part ludicrousness.)

This she knows as well:

She can't not have him in her life.

* * *

Angela shakes her head in annoyance and tells her:

_This is the kind of stupid logic that broke me and Hodgins up._

Brennan feels the need to point out that Angela and Hodgins broke up due to an unexpected realisation of mutual apathy; she and Booth are anything but apathetic, but in any case, _angelaandhodgins _are a perfect example in support of why she was right in saying no. Feelings change. People change. For better or worse, relationships _evolve –_

Oh,

she thinks. She might just have found the contradiction in her conclusions.

* * *

She's avoiding Sweets and senses that is where Booth is partly placing his blame, and the abrupt severance of contact seems to be suiting the psychologist fine because for some reason she doesn't understand he's pissed at them too. Until Cam corners them in Brennan's office and says they better sort their shit out soon before the FBI starts asking questions, and entirely against their will they find themselves right back where the whole despairing mess probably started.

She sits down first and Booth leaves a space between them that is _too_perfect; too equidistant between painful familiarity and an unfriendly gap. She folds her hands and pretends not to notice, and Sweets slouches behind his desk and glares at them wordlessly for a moment before straightening suddenly and launching into his attack.

"You – you should have fought harder for this," he accuses of Booth, who frowns and opens his mouth to no avail. "And _you_," he continues, voice raising in pitch a little as he rounds in on her, "you should have fought, too."

"Excuse me?"

Sweets is horrified, desperate.

"You knew where all this was headed – that it was raging towards a grand crescendo. You knew what he was going to say, and you should have stopped him if you weren't ready to hear it."

She holds herself incredibly still for a moment before turning to Booth and confessing, softly,

"I have learned recently that I can be an extremely selfish person. And even though what Sweets said is true, I needed... I needed you to try to change my mind. Even if it wasn't ready to be changed."

He swallows and pulls his eyes away.

If there's one thing they're good at, she's learned, it's messing up their moments.

* * *

It's roughly a month later when the paperwork piles up after a demanding case; they find themselves caught up in her office later than expected – far later than they've been careful to let themselves remain in each other's company, _since. _Booth loosens his tie and lets the files sit haphazard in his lap, and his voice is low when he speaks, quietly.

"Don't you ever get tired of being alone?"

Something inside of her shudders, heavy and bittersweet.

"All the time."

What she doesn't say is this:

She's never really felt alone since she's known him.

* * *

Two days. It takes another two days to embolden her, mostly with annoyance at him for putting this unfairly upon her – for having unrealistic expectations and ruining the good thing they had going with all his goddamn _words. _Only she can't stop thinking about the words, particularly the ones about the _knowing _and the old people, and if she lets herself be honest, she's scared of growing old and being forgotten, so scared, and she doesn't want to face that fear alone.

They're at a crime scene when she crosses her arms and shifts her weight restlessly between two feet, agitated, like he's the one that's bombarding her.

"I don't want you to move on."

He throws one glance at the matter of factness of her expression and the curious field agents around them and takes her gently but firmly by the elbow and pulls her aside.

"What?"

"I know it's selfish, and completely unfair, but... I don't want you to move on. I want you to wait for me. Because I'm not in the same place as you, not yet, and I might not ever be. But I think... I think there's a chance I could get there someday. Maybe. And I wanted... I wanted you to tell me I was wrong, that things could change. I wanted you to tell me you'd wait for me, Booth. That I'm worth the wait."

"Yeah, you were wrong," he says eventually, and strangely evenly. "People can change. You can change. You're not the same person you were back then and neither am I. But maybe I wanted - _needed_something, too, Bones. I've waited six years for you to be in the same place as me. I'm tired of waiting." He swallows. "I needed for you not to need convincing."

She scuffs her feet in the dirt.

"That is... far more rational than anything I am feeling right now."

"Feelings aren't supposed to be rational, Bones," he chides gently. "They're instinctive. That's the point."

She plays with his tie; smooths it down beneath her palm. Takes a shaky breath. Rests her forehead against his own and holds his eyes.

"I knew," she says quietly, and he freezes between her fingertips. "That night at the bar, when I left – I left because I knew something, too. I just didn't know _what_."

"But you knew enough to walk away, right?" he asks, the words scraping hotly at the back of his throat. He doesn't need to listen to this, listen to her sort all this shit, all the broken pieces comprising all that's left of _them_, out in her head. He _can't_listen to this. Not so soon after. Not yet.

"Yes. But not in the way that you think. The opposite, in fact. Booth." His coat is rough beneath her thumbs, and she's still surprised he's letting her so close. "I'm not saying this because I've changed my mind, but I thought it was important – I _wanted_you to know. I knew, Booth. I always knew."

He shifts and swallows again, and she can see his eyes are wet like they were that night and _god, _it's like whatever's left of her heart is still tearing itself apart from the inside.

The words are too thick in his mouth.

"Why tell me this, Bones? If nothing's changed?"

"I needed you to know you weren't wrong," she insists, eyes shining. "That this was never your fault. That it's definitely my fault and I'm the one that's broken. I needed you to understand. None of this has _ever_been your fault."

"I gotta go," he whispers, and the fleece of his coat grazes her palms as he pulls away.

* * *

Seven months. This how long they allow themselves to let the universe start making sense again.

He moves on, of course: this she knows she should have expected.

(Cam once asked her if she was familiar with the notion of mulling. She'd responded that she'd never really seen the point.)

The problem here is that she genuinely likes the reporter; that she can see, all too easily, how Booth and Hannah _fit,_ comfortably together to make something worth somewhat more than the sum of their parts. She _understands _Hannah as a person, and that for her is unusual.

Her mistake, she realises far too late, is that a secret part of her has always believed she and Booth were inevitable.

_Everything happens eventually –_

Or maybe, it was believing he did, too.

* * *

"I don't want to hurt you," he tells her, and the part she knows he leaves off is _the way you hurt me._

The car ride back to her apartment this time is quiet and suffocating; she's soaking wet and freezing and for the first time in his presence feeling completely lost and alone. When they get there he doesn't make a move to come up and she doesn't offer; they've been here before and she's forfeited any right to wish that it were different.

"I should really call Angela. It doesn't feel right leaving you like this," he says in a low voice.

He doesn't look at her, and his knuckles are tight where they still grip the wheel.

She unclasps the seatbelt and feels along the inside of the door for the handle.

"Thank you for the ride, Booth."

Her legs are shaky as she drops out of the SUV and makes her way near-blindly up the stairs, not entirely sure what to think or to feel and so on autopilot she sheds her coat and dripping clothes and steps into the shower, still shaking despite the warmth of the water on her skin and she can't help but flash back to where he pulled her to safety from the road.

She slides down the tiles and thinks about things coming full circle; thinks about purpose, and getting into taxis and Booth and the rain in the kind of metaphors that she hates, and somewhere in between it all she remembers the sting of the tequila and the heat and the feel of his mouth against hers.

She stays beneath the stream until the water runs cold. The liquor cabinet beckons as she passes but she's all out of tequila and besides, the numb that follows the burn isn't what she's looking for.

After all, hasn't she gotten what she wanted?

_This is feeling something, Dr Brennan, _but the sensation isn't new. She's walked downstairs and seen the presents under the tree and watched Russ walk out of her life, when _god, _she was fucking _fifteen; _she's grown up an orphan and a scientist and had her own mother's bones laid out on her cold steel table; pressed her forehead against Zack's and known with so much sorrow her apprentice's biggest flaw. She's let someone into her heart and had to watch him sail away on a boat that shared a name that was never really hers to begin with yet mocked her with its poetry, and she's already lost Booth once – is it really so unforgiveable to need to never to have to go through that again?

She curls her body around a pillow, twists in the sheets and bites the back of her palm.

There is something they should know by now: she is no stranger to her world's inversion.

* * *

It takes a single sleepless night to discover that this is the irony of her life:

She rejects a good man's advances out of a deep seated fear that for heart crushing reasons beyond her control, _everybody leaves. _

And then it is only through Booth's gentle refusal of her now that she comes to realise, _this is the one that doesn't._

She gets the signal that the universe is sending her.

Once again, it's just too late.

* * *

"I can't have lunch with you and Hannah again for awhile," she tells him offhandedly, _after,_far better composed and barely making eye contact. "Or any other meals, for that matter. Maybe dinner occasionally, and with the others, but just not... not the three of us."

"I know."

"And I should probably rescind my open invitation for all of us to go swimming with Parker in my building's pool, because I realise now that situation would be unnecessarily awkward."

"I get it, Bones," he says gently.

The top right corner of her lip curls back a little in her quintessential fashion.

"You've been very gracious about this."

"Yeah, well. I kind of have an idea or two about how it feels," he says, the tiniest of wry smiles ghosting his lips, and she can't help but return it.

* * *

He comes to her apartment one evening and hovers in her doorway; there are no boxes of takeout cradled in his arms this time, no Cheshire grin gracing his features and his t-shirt soft and dark against his skin. He looks tired, the way she feels, but less miserable, and when she lets him in he stops himself before he can throw his jacket carelessly over the back of her sofa like he usually would have, _before._

"Booth?"

"I can't stay," he says.

He fidgets, and she remains in her place by the door, hands hanging at her sides and eyes slightly downcast, waiting for him to make a move because she's useless at reading people and so confused, and even though _people_ has never really included _Booth_before, she isn't at all sure why he's come.

"I need you to know that nothing about Hannah and me is going to be about obligation," he says eventually.

She feels the beginnings of numbness trickle down the length of her spine.

"I'm not the saint everyone paints me for, Bones. I'm not staying with her because it's the right thing to do. I'm staying with her because she's where I want to be." He pauses here; to test the waters and be certain he isn't playing this wrong. "You realise I'm not saying this to hurt you. I'm saying it because truth, and rationality – these are the things you understand."

"Yes," she agrees.

"I just want you to understand, because when our roles were reversed, for a long time I didn't."

She looks sad again, and _Jesus, _he hates it when she's looking sad.

"It's been three days. I've had sufficient time to adjust, especially considering my brain functions at a higher level than most."

"Bones," he says knowingly, devastatingly. "It's not your brain that's trying to adjust. And this thing," he continues, brushing his knuckles lightly over her heart, "is going to need more than three days, trust me."

She quivers, ever so slightly, and swallows back the tears.

"I'm inclined to agree," she manages to choke out.

There is a thick silence before he turns to leave.

"Thank you, Booth," she says. "For helping me to understand."

What she doesn't tell him is, and it's because he probably already knows:

It's the understanding part that hurts.

* * *

She succeeds in avoiding Hannah without really needing to try; she senses Booth is trying to insulate them from crossing paths but on a Friday afternoon after a case they meet unexpectedly outside an elevator in the Hoover building. She can sense immediately that Hannah _knows, _knows perhaps the way Booth _knew _and she wasn't ready to know quite yet but does now; the kind of knowledge that is painful but still welcome because it's raw and it's the truth.

Hannah smiles and to her credit manages to not be pitying; Brennan smiles back and it's possible for her to be genuine because she bears no grudge. She cannot hold it against the reporter for recognising the amazing opportunity that is allowing a man like Booth to love her; cannot fault her for taking him up on all that he was offering just because she herself was too foolish to realise he couldn't wait around forever.

"I know I should probably hate you or be unreasonably jealous right now," Hannah tells her with her quaint, refreshing candour, "but all I can say is that this can't be easy. You're a very strong woman, Temperance, and I'm so sorry. And that is the honest truth."

Hannah doesn't say _I hope we can still be friends _because she knows just as well as Brennan does that it would be trite and unrealistic, but there is something bright and forlorn in her eyes that communicates that she wishes more than anything it were true.

_Hannah, she – she's not a consolation prize. I -_

"Booth loves you very much," Brennan observes, shifting slightly.

"Yeah, he does," the other woman agrees, good-naturedly. "I kind of have a soft spot for him, too."

"I am... very glad."

It's not a complete lie because she's happy for Booth; she always has been – that has been the easy part. Hannah smiles again and ducks her head as she backs away, gesturing at the folders cradled against the anthropologist's chest.

"Goodnight, Temperance. Don't work too late, okay?"

The blonde spins lightly on her heel, and just like that, she's gone.

* * *

It's roughly a month _after _when they stop being noticeably skittish with each other, and without prior discussion or intent they find themselves in their old booth at the diner, sneaking food from each other's plates and talking about things other than evidence, talking as easily as they might have done _before,_ talking like they're _partners _again and still the centre, and maybe, just maybe, she thinks, the centre's still going to hold. Booth says something about a suspect dropping into their laps like fate around a mouthful of pie, and as she chews on a piece of cucumber from her salad she falls contemplative.

"You know," she begins, because she thinks it might almost be okay to talk about it now, "it seems if fate truly exists, ours is not to be together as you originally alluded, but on the contrary to keep missing our opportunities to do so. Perhaps that is the signal the universe is sending."

"Yeah, but you still don't believe in fate, right?" he reminds her offhandedly as he steals a handful of her fries.

"Right," she agrees. "But you still do."

There's a moment of weighty silence and eye contact, and as the seconds tick over she suppresses a shiver.

"Yeah," he says eventually, voice broken but soft. "Yeah, Bones. I do."

It's an apology. But this she knew already.

She lowers her eyes and nods even as she thinks she might feel something prickling inside her, hot and sharp like shards of broken glass.

The terrifying part is this: one of them has to be right.

* * *

His hand rests lightly on the small of her back when they leave, and it's warm and it's familiar and it's something like acceptance, and when Booth invites her to drinks at the Founding Fathers with Hannah and the rest of them she only hesitates a moment before resigning an okay.

Right side up or not – this is the way her universe now looks.

_Three days. The sun comes up because the world turns -_

In three days, she hopes this will again be beautiful.


End file.
